198 research outputs found
Explaining index based livestock insurance to pastoralists
Livestock production in arid and semi-arid rangelands is a risky enterprise. Covariate risk of catastrophic livestock loss due to drought is the most critical uninsured risk facing livestock producers. These losses can lead to persistent poverty. We are trying to design an index based livestock insurance (IBLI) program as a viable means to help pastoralists in northern Kenya manage such covariate risk of livestock losses due to drought. A predicted livestock mortality index â established from a statistical relationship between satellite-generated vegetation imagery and historical records of community level livestock losses â represents an objectively, cost effectively measured and non-human manipulable index that triggers insurance payout. The insurance is offered by private insurance companies. The advantages of reduced transaction costs and asymmetric information problems, however, come at the cost of increased basis risk, which refers to the imperfect correlation between an insuredâs loss experience and the index. We have developed a game that explains to pastoralists how such an insurance product could work. We built in the game both covariate and idiosyncratic shocks, and use a subsistence constraint to generate bifurcating asset dynamics, observed empirically in the targeted communities. This paper describes how the game was designed, how it was used in the field, and presents findings on how individuals played the game. The paper concludes by discussing how these findings are being used in the design and broader extension of the index based insurance product
Insuring against droughtârelated livestock mortality: Piloting index based livestock insurance in northern Kenya
Climate related shocks are among the leading cause of production and efficiency losses in smallholder crop and livestock production in rural Africa. Consequently, the identification of tools to help manage the risks associated with climactic extremities is increasingly considered to be amongst the key pillars of any agenda to enhance agricultural growth and welfare in rural Africa. This paper describes the application of a promising innovation in insurance design â indexâbased insurance â that seeks to bring the benefits of formal insurance to help manage the weatherârelated risks faced by rural crop and livestock producers in lowâincome countries. In particular, we highlight the research and development agenda of a comprehensive effort to design commercially viable indexâbased livestock insurance aimed at protecting the pastoral populations of Northern Kenya from the considerable droughtârelated livestock mortality risk that they face. Detailing the conditions that make the pastoral economy in Northern Kenya an ideal candidate for the provision of indexâbased insurance products, the paper describes the contract design, defines its structure, offers analysis that indicates a high likelihood of commercial sustainability among the target market and describes the process of implementation leading up to the launch of a pilot in Marsabit district of Northern Kenya in early 2010
Using Disjoint Reachability for Parallelization
Abstract. We present a disjoint reachability analysis for Java. Our analysis com-putes extended points-to graphs annotated with reachability states. Each heap node is annotated with a set of reachability states that abstract the reachability of objects represented by the node. The analysis also includes a global pruning step which analyzes a reachability graph to prune imprecise reachability states that cannot be removed with local reasoning alone. We have implemented the analysis and used it to parallelize 9 benchmarks. Our evaluation shows the anal-ysis results are sufficiently precise to parallelize our benchmarks and achieve an average speedup of 16.9Ă.
Ocean Bottom Seismometer Augmentation in the North Pacific (OBSANP) - cruise report
The Ocean Bottom Seismometer Augmentation in the North Pacific Experiment (OBSANP,
June-July, 2013, R/V Melville) addresses the coherence and depth dependence of deep-water
ambient noise and signals. During the 2004 NPAL Experiment in the North Pacific Ocean, in
addition to predicted ocean acoustic arrivals and deep shadow zone arrivals, we observed "deep
seafloor arrivals" (DSFA) that were dominant on the seafloor Ocean Bottom Seismometer (OBS)
(at about 5000m depth) but were absent or very weak on the Distributed Vertical Line Array
(DVLA) (above 4250m depth). At least a subset of these arrivals correspond to bottomdiffracted
surface-reflected (BDSR) paths from an out-of-plane seamount. BDSR arrivals are
present throughout the water column, but at depths above the conjugate depth are obscured by
ambient noise and PE predicted arrivals. On the 2004 NPAL/LOAPEX experiment BDSR paths
yielded the largest amplitude seafloor arrivals for ranges from 500 to 3200km. The OBSANP
experiment tests the hypothesis that BDSR paths contribute to the arrival structure on the deep
seafloor even at short ranges (from near zero to 4-1/2CZ). The OBSANP cruise had three major
research goals: a) identification and analysis of DSFA and BDSR arrivals occurring at short
(1/2CZ) ranges in the 50 to 400Hz band, b) analysis of deep sea ambient noise in the band 0.03
to 80Hz, and c) analysis of the frequency dependence of BR and SRBR paths. On OBSANP we
deployed a 32 element VLA from 12 to 1000m above the seafloor, eight short-period OBSs and
four long-period OBSs and carried out a 15day transmission program using a J15-3 acoustic
source.Funding was provided by the Office of Naval Research under contract #'s N00014-10-1-0987
and N00014-10-1-051
The Impact of Business Intelligence Systems on Profitability and Risks of Firms
202105 bcvcAccepted ManuscriptRGC155009/15BEarly releas
Operator precedence for data-dependent grammars
Constructing parsers based on declarative specification of operator precedence is a very old research topic, and there are various existing approaches. However, these approaches are either tied to a particular parsing technique, or cannot deal with all corner cases found in programming languages. In this paper we present an implementation of declarative specification of operator precedence for general parsing that (1) is independent of the underlying parsing algorithm, (2) does not require any grammar transformation that increases the size of the grammar, (3) preserves the shape of parse trees of the original, natural grammar, and (4) can deal with intricate cases of operator precedence found in functional programming languages such as OCaml. Our new approach to operator precedence is formulated using data-dependent grammars, which extend context-free grammars with arbitrary computation, variable binding and constraints. We implemented our approach using Iguana, a data-dependent parsing framework, and evaluated it by parsing Java and OCaml source files. The results show that our approach is practical for parsing programming languages with complicated operator precedence rules
The Vehicle, November 1960, Vol. 3 no. 1
CONTENTS
To the ReaderStaffpage 2
Nâ = N : 1Donald C. Blairpage 3
ConsistencyDonald C. Blairpage 3
Unto MeLinda Kay Campbellpage 4
The Meek Shall InheritE. J. B. page 5
The Infinite QuestLarry W. Dudleypage 6
Dreamerâs DawnMike Hindmanpage 7
BirthNancy Coepage 7
The Lost DutchmanDonald C. Blairpage 8
W. E. Noonan IRobert S. Hodgepage 8
A Soldierâs OrdealDonald E. Shephardsonpage 9
Personal PossessionMary Beilpage 11
Thine The GloryDonald C. Blairpage 12
The ThornJan Holstlawpage 13
A Lordâs Day MorningLinda Campbellpage 14
Observations of a 6-Year-OldTom McPeakpage 15
Jewels of TimeJudith Jerintspage 16
LavenderE. J. B. page 16https://thekeep.eiu.edu/vehicle/1008/thumbnail.jp
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